"How close was the union of these tribes was shown by their use of a common name, while the choice of this name points out the tribe which at the moment when we first meet them, in the fifth century, must have been the most powerful in the confederacy." [Footnote: Green's History of the English People.] Among themselves they bore in common the name of Englishmen.
Among the characteristics of those German ancestors of ours are the following: They were very independent; the free landholder was "the free-necked man." The ties of kinship were very strong.

"Each kinsman was his kinsman's keeper, bound to protect him from wrong, to hinder him from wrong-doing, and to suffer with and pay for him if wrong were done." [Footnote: Green's History of the English People.] They were very much attached to home.

"Land with the German race seems everywhere to have been the accompaniment of full freedom....

The landless man ceased for all practical purposes to be free, though he was no man's slave." [Footnote: Green's History of the English People.] Among themselves they were quite social.

Though tillers of the soil they lived, not isolated, but grouped together in small villages.